Like most of you commented, I to am very skeptical of the over greasing article I referenced yesterday. For in typical American fashion, I to tend to believe "more is better" for just about everything. So I set my favorite search engine to hunt down articles and references to over greasing, and to my surprise it came back with a whole passle of them! Now I am still not convinced I can particularly overgrease a hub. Rubber wheels do not spin all that fast really. Not even with a toy trailer and their tiny wheels. And certainly not the front wheel of an N series tractor. Couple of hundred rpm max roughly. Maybe a thousand. But, if the articles are talking about other machineries, like electric motors, I could see some issues there. I have even bound up some things through overgreasing something that had no way to relieve the pressure of excess grease, like u-joints. And a grease gun does put down a whole lot of pressure. Like others have mentioned, I've seen a number of trailers dead on the side of the road with clearly destroyed spindles. And I've always *assumed* they died from lack of grease. But truthfully, I don't make a habit of pulling over and examining broken down trailer spindles. In thinking over the spindles and such that died and that I did happen to examine (and can think of today), here's the breakdown:
motorcycle trailer, excess play (maybe lack of grease too)
Mustang front end, unknown, spindle failed
Boat trailer #1, water damage
Boat trailer #2, excess play
Toyota truck #1, excess play
Toyota truck #2, lack of grease
Ford Galaxy, excess play
Spitfire, lack of grease I've also known quite a few other pieces of machinery which have died, doe to excess play. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think excess play has been the killer usually for hubs. For I've seen many a wheel bearing that looked fine (to my astonishment) with barely a coating of some ancient grease on it. My 8N's front hubs in fact. I seriously don't think they'd ever been greased since the tractor was manufactured in 1951. Yet they were fine. Did they survive because they didn't have excess play and therefore weren't beaten upon? I do suspect so. Now I'm not planning to end greasing of my equipment. But this has given me pause and made me think some about my normal practise of just cramming grease in until it squirts out somewhere or my hand can't squeeze the grease gun lever any further. Here's a bunch of links on this subject that I found. In no particular order, with no endorsements from me: Link
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